In an industry where one dead
deal can put a studio out of business, surviving two swings of the axe is
something to celebrate. Throwing parties on two continents, Arkane Studios just
honored its 10 year anniversary with live music, fine dining, and great vibes.

This is not at all what Raphael
Colantonio imagined when he first started out. But as he now realizes, "you
can achieve a lot of things with just passion and being a little naïve
sometimes."

Looking Back

Before he was CEO and Creative
Director of Arkane Studios -- with offices in Lyon, France and Austin, Texas -- Colantonio says he was just a fanboy.

"I
would contact Warren Spector or Richard Garriott," he recalls, "and
just be absolutely like a kid. 'Guys, I
just want to work for you. I'll do
anything. Get coffee, whatever.' And now
whenever I see them... They probably don't perceive me as I was back then,
because I have more of a legitimate place in the industry. But it's still a
little bit embarrassing when I think about it."

Lesson number one for
those who would enter this industry: be willing to look like a fool. Colantonio's
willingness to risk a little pride led to working with the very people he most
admired. He was and is a huge fan of
Richard Garriott and the Ultima
series. "Those older games totally inspired us," he says, "and
of course ION Storm with Deus Ex and
Harvey."

Harvey Smith joined Arkane
Studios after working at Origin Systems, ION Storm, and Midway Games. Best
known for his work on highly acclaimed games such as Deus Ex, Smith
-- now a partner at Arkane -- shares Colantonio's approach to game
development.

"We're both creative
with common sense," says Colantonio. "We're not like businessmen; we're
more like creative people with a lot of passion to make things happen. And then
we are practical and pragmatic to do everything we can to make it happen."

That emphasis on creativity
is at the core of Arkane's success. From
the beginning, Colantonio has made a point of working with the people who make
the games he likes to play. "That's
a privilege of owning your own business," he says, "to think, 'Hey,
how 'bout I work with this guy? He's an awesome person and I really want him to
be working with us.' It's like a little gift that you give to yourself."

Arkane has worked with
some notables in the industry, including Doug Church (who currently works
for Electronic Arts) and Viktor Antonov (the fantastic art director of Half-Life 2). "The truth is,"
Colantonio says, "those guys are all passionate and they're like me, you
know? They're not proper businessmen. They're in the industry because they like
what they do."

And everyone at Arkane
Studios likes what they do. The team strives to follow in the footsteps of
Looking Glass and Origin Systems, taking inspiration from games like Ultima Underworld and System Shock. "When I started to
play those games," says Colantonio, "that was the moment I felt the
difference between playing games as a hobby and feeling like this is really
what I want to do."

Rise and Fall...

Thirty years ago, when
Colantonio first started playing on the computer at age eight, there was not
much context for that kind of behavior. "Today, everybody plays on a
console," he says, "but back then, my parents were a little worried
that I might turn out to be a weirdo who never goes out. They did not feel very
good about it."

With a mother who worked
in administration, and a father who was in
absentia, Colantonio's uncle served as a mentor. "He was a business
guy. He probably influenced me a lot to make a business out of whatever I knew
how to do."

Having not known exactly what
he wanted to do as a kid, Colantonio pursued a wide range of interests from
drawing and music to computers and math.

"Part of me wanted to be somehow
artistic," he says, "and part of me wanted to be more controlling. As
an artist, you don't control much. You go with the wind. And so, I was confused
-- until this opportunity came up with EA. That was my first job. It was just
pure accident."

After finishing his
studies and while serving his required term in the French military, Colantonio
entered a magazine contest and answered some questions about Ultima.

Hoping to win a chance to test Ultima VIII, he wound up being offered a
job in customer service. He was the eighth employee of Electronic Arts in France, where he set up their IT and customer support.

He left EA UK in 1997 to join a small studio in France that contracted for Atari. Two years later he
started Arkane, which released Ultima Underworld-influenced first-person PC role-playing game Arx
Fatalis in 2002.

"I think it was the
most true game that we've worked on and done," says Colantonio. "It
was exactly what I wanted to do. There were too many bugs, I know that. But
still I am very proud of it." At a time when games were made by teams of
30 people or more, Arkane created Arx
Fatalis with only nine people. "We sweated blood on that one."

Arkane CEO Raphael
Colantonio

Arx Fatalis offered more than 100 hours of great
story, lovely graphics, magnificent sound, and sensible gameplay progression.
It was critically acclaimed and led to the nomination of Arkane Studios as
Rookie Studio of the Year at the prestigious Game Developers Choice Awards.

In 2006, Arkane opened the
Austin studio and released Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, published by Ubisoft. The PC
version received mixed reviews. Two years later, the Xbox 360 version, Dark Messiah of Might and Magic: Elements (which was ported by Ubisoft's internal teams) earned an even less favorable
response from critics.

When Arkane wanted to continue work on its next original IP game, The Crossing, it
ran into trouble. "The few deals
that were available to us were just very ugly," says Colantonio, "It
would have been a setup for failure."

Instead they accepted an
offer from Electronic Arts to work on a different game. "The situation
with them was great," says Colantonio, "so we gave up on [The Crossing], and we worked on this big
game with well-known people. It was great.
But then a year later when all the problems started, with the economy
and all that..."

EA dropped the undisclosed project,
and it took four months for Arkane to land the next deal. "That has been a financial hurt on us,"
admits Colantonio.

...and Rise Again

But then came the opporunity to be one of the four studios working on 2K's massive BioShock 2, quickly followed by an as-yet
unannounced project.

"Those two recent
deals we had," says Colantonio, "BioShock
2, and this other thing that is really great and I wish I could talk about
it, they were not an accident. Those were the result of a long history of
knowing those guys. And they knew what we were able to do and eventually the
good opportunity came out -- then they contacted us.

"When those bad
things happen to you," he reflects, "it's really hard. You might
think, 'Why did I waste my time? I should have done something else.' You don't
know yet, but there might be a consequence a few years later that makes it
good.

"Even the BioShock 2 thing --
we had the opportunity to work with the creative director of BioShock 2 on one of those games that
got killed. And back then, it looked like a disaster, like we wasted a year of
our time on something that would never ship. But three years later, life
bounces back at you. He remembered us."

The Games They Make

Colantonio cites H.P. Lovecraft
as a major inspiration. "What I really like is the world he created,"
he says, "the world of the mid-'50s with gods and creatures that do not
exist of course, but feel very real. The pace. There's nothing in-your-face in
his books. It's all very subtle. It requires imagination, more than just seeing
the monsters.

"The kind of games we
like to make are dark and for adults and violent," he continues. "It's
the easiest thing to communicate in whatever game you're doing. The easiest
fantasy to sell a guy is just to beat up some other guy. War, anything. Gameplay-wise it's easy to sell and easy to
play. You get into the fantasy instantly.

"At the end of the
day, the bread and butter of what we sell to people... I'm not ashamed that it's
simple violence in the fantasy world of whatever. Within the experience,
though, we're going to sneak in a lot of deep things -- moral choice and
emotional moments -- and bring all the elements together to really make the
player feel like he's there."

A scene from Arkane's 10th anniversary party.

It's going that extra step
to make sure the player has a compelling experience that Colantonio hopes
separates Arkane from other studios. "We haven't tried to go everywhere at
the same time. We've always exposed the same message to the publishers and the
customers in general -- you know, we're passionate and that's what we like to
do. We like to do first person games with depth. It doesn't need to be dark.
Usually it is, because that's our taste."

But depth is often
invisible to publishers. "They don't care about that," says
Colantonio. "They like quantifiable things like how many monsters you
have. How many levels, how many weapons. They want to know if the graphics are
better than other games. Do you have physics? All these kinds of things. They
don't ask whether you have emotions of moral choices in the game. They are not
qualities that are recognized as selling points."

Game studios compete on
the basis of what sells. "Maybe the industry is starting to realize that
we all have access to the same great technology and artists," Colantonio
continues, "and maybe now it's time to start competing on other, more
subtle grounds. I think there's a lot of progress to be made in AI. But not
necessarily how smart is your AI -- that would not necessarily be fun -- but
how much emotion can it convey and how believable is it? Anything that can
represent a character in a more believable way will be a win."

The Future

Is that a hint about what
we can expect with the next Arkane title?

"Wait for next
announcements," says Colantonio. "It's gonna be exactly what we want
to do. Not a compromised, marketed game. We've been lucky to find a publisher
that supports us and understands this kind of game and is supportive of them. The
people who like the kind of games that we like are going to be really excited.

"There are companies
that do first person shooters," he continues. "There are companies
that do sports games. We do first person immersive games with depth. That's what we do.

But it wasn't always that
straightforward. "If I knew how hard it was going to be," says
Colantonio, "I would probably not have done it. That's a common saying,
and it applies to us too.

"The industry as a
whole is [even] harder to get into now," says Colantonio. "It would
be hard today to just come up as four people with no experience and open a
company and start contacting some guys you like and hope it will work out. But somehow that's what happened to us 10
years ago.

"The hardest part is
the reality and brutality of the business. The way the business is set up. We're
not in an industry where one guy decides. When you meet now with the
publishers, you don't really know who makes decisions. Is it the stockholder?
Is it the marketing guy? Who is it? That makes it very, very, very difficult.
There are probably other activities where sales are straightforward.

"We only have 10 or
15 possible clients, if you think about it. Because maybe there are 50 publishers in the
world, or something of that magnitude. But the ones that are targeted for us,
the ones that can publish the kind of game that we like to do, the kind of
budget that we are needing, there are maybe not even 15. Maybe 10. So imagine
an industry where all you have is 10 clients. And for some reason they right
now do not need what you're doing.

"And then, when you
try to talk to them, you don't really know inside the organization who decides.
And it takes forever to decide. It might take six months. Or a year. And then
the guy you've been talking to goes to another publisher. So it's not the same
guy anymore and you have to start again from scratch.

"This business is
really, really hard. And we've tried different options like working with
agents. The truth is, it's just the way the business is set up. It's set up
with a lot of people that are paid not to take any risk -- because it would go
against their career. So it's easier to say no to something than say yes to
something that might not turn out good. So you have to break through doors to
have access to the right people.

"Working with our
very first publisher was very good. We were a very small developer and they
were a small publisher, so it didn't feel like a company of three people
talking to a company of 10,000 people. That's how it felt a lot after that.

"But that's not the
case now. Again, we cannot talk about it. We can't say who it is. But it's a
great publisher and I am in contact with the direct decision-makers. If you can
talk to the people who directly make the decision, then you can understand the
way they think. Everything goes smoother, faster."

A scene from Arkane's 10th anniversary party.

No Accidents

"What I've noticed is
there are no real accidents," says Colantonio. "All those -- what I
call almost successes, as opposed to failures -- they led us somewhere. There were a lot of reasons to fail, and we
somehow made our way until now. When I
look at the people we have, that's what I'm really proud of."

"Over the past 10
years, we've had a lot of people stick around no matter how hard it's been
sometimes. The team in Austin
is really strong. Those guys are great. I've got some awesome people as well in
France. Some of the people who've been with us since the
beginning, like Julien [Roby] (our producer) and Sebastien Mitton (our art director)
are pretty cool. Christophe [Carrier] (our audio guy, level designer, etc). Too
many to mention. Everybody has a strong impact.

"There are other
people with me and we all believe in the same thing and we really want to make
it work. We've decided we're on this mission, and as much as we could push we'd
just push. There's no reason to not try at everything. So many things that are
successful are just controlled accidents. Most of them are, 'Guys, there's
really no chance that this will work. Let's just believe it will work.' That's
how it works. Otherwise you just don't do anything."